For No One [Fallout / The Ghoul / Cooper Howard]

11

"Remember the plan."

"Hard to forget when you're tellin' me every two seconds."

Georgia rolled her eyes at Coop as they walked down the street of an old city in ruin. Collapsed brick walls, buildings that were indistinguishable from the next, and rubbled littering the roads. The city was hardly a shell of its former self. It was the bigger cities like this, left mostly abandoned, that made Georgia wonder what it was like to ever live in one before the war. She would never get to see cars zipping through, traffic backing up, people going in and out of real stores that were untouched by the effects of a bomb or several.

When she didn't respond to him being a smart ass, Coop looked over at his side where she was distracted, imagining what this city was like before the war, what it was called, and what the people were like when you didn't have to worry about mutant animals or crazy cannibals. He asked, "You havin' doubts?"

She shook her head, "No, well, maybe. I guess I'm just scared once I go back down there, I won't see the surface again."

He didn't understand what there was to worry about. It was simple. Get in the vault and blow everyone's brains out. Even if she changed her mind and didn't want a full on massacre, all she had to do was kill the overseer and the leading scientists, maybe some guards along the way. Coop could do that with his eyes closed, so he didn't see the problem here.

Although he didn't understand, nor could he bring himself to, he could tell it was something that was really stressing her out. Even if the vault was empty, it couldn't be easy going back to the place you endured so much torture and watched your own real mother die, especially as a child. He stopped in his tracks, pulling her by the wrist before she could walk on without him.

"You got nothin' to be scared of," he assured her, pulling her closer and bringing his thumb to her lips, grazing it while keeping his eyes on hers, "I'll be right behind you like I have been. Nothin' they did to you is ever gonna happen again."

Maybe it was how he was inches from her face, softly touching her skin with his rough hands, or maybe it was because his words actually reminded her that he was damn near invincible, but it worked. She only nodded, dropping her head as he dropped his hand from her face. He looked past her and squinted, seeing some silhouettes in the distance by an old bus stop. He returned his attention to her and said, "Alright, I think I see 'em lined up over there. I'm sorry in advance."

Before she could ask why he was sorry, she was being spun around and pushed to her knees to the ground with her back to him. Her knees hit the asphalt hard as she bit back a groan. In a matter of seconds, a lasso slid over her head and down her arms until it tightened around her waist so that she was tucked into it at the torso. He kneeled down and tied the slack around her wrists, "I'm only puttin' a slip knot so it looks like you're tied down, but you'll be able to get loose."

It was smart. If he would have actually tied it, she'd be going in defenseless without being able to use her arms.

He tied the last knot, giving it a squeeze before pulling her to her feet. She glared at him as he got a little too into character, "What the hell? Not so rough."

The smile that crept onto his features was enough to make her ill temper go away as he asked rhetorically, "Oh, all of a sudden you don't like it like that?" There were so many things she wanted to say to that, but she refrained from commenting, mostly because three figures down the road could be seen making their way towards them. One of them was carrying an old, faded yellow suitcase.

As they got closer, she could see that there were three guards dressed in armor over their blue jumpsuits and one other man who was wearing a labcoat. He was the only one unarmed. None of them looked familiar, but her heart began racing immediately nonetheless.